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Tracks View
Tracks View is a utilitarian view of the library, but there’s more to it than just a list. __TOC__ Configure Columns These are the options you can change directly from the columns menu, which can be opened by right clicking anywhere within the column headers. Most of this menu is also available in the menu at the top left of the panel (where it says "Tracks"). When ticked, this will keep all columns confined to the width of the panel; otherwise it will allow them to overrun the bounds of the panel if you resize them (creating a scrollbar at the bottom). Selecting this will make MB try to find a best fit for the existing columns within the bounds of the panel (it will shrink columns to fit the panel even when Keep Columns Sized to Panel is unticked). It is a one-time event. If you choose one of the picture options, a column will be added for the artwork at the far left of the main panel. The small picture is no bigger than the normal lines for a track; the medium picture will cause the lines to be more spread out, but is still quite small. *Not Displayed *Small Picture *Medium Picture Set Displayed Fields... "Set Displayed Fields" opens a window where you can choose which columns to display in the main panel. The list of displayed columns ("Selected Fields") is on the right, and all the other columns are on the left. You can add and remove columns by drag & drop or by double clicking, and you can reorder them by dragging. The columns are listed in order from left to right, so in the list left is at the top. New columns are added on the right (the bottom of the list) by default. Sort By You can sort by any column you have displayed by clicking on the column heading. Clicking again will reverse the sort order (Z-A instead of A-Z). The Playlist column is an exception; it does not support sorting. If you hold down the Ctrl key while sorting, you can choose multiple sort criteria. For instance, you could sort by Artist, then Year, then Album. This will be indicated by a small number next to the sorting arrow in the column header. Alternately, you can use the sorting clusters found in the Sort By submenu. There are a number of preconfigured options, and you can create up to eight of your own Sort By configurations via Define Custom Sorting. One advantage of sorting from the menu is that you don't have to display all the columns you sort with. For instance, you could use Sort Artist without having to display the Sort Artist tag in the main panel. For more tips on sorting, see Using Sort Order. Group By Choosing a grouping field will insert a header into the list of tracks at the beginning of each new group. It will also sort them by whatever grouping you chose, so that the groups aren't fragmented. For instance, if you choose to group by Artist, you will get a header for each unique artist, with all their tracks listed underneath. (This is not fixed. You can always change the sorting again once you've added a grouping. MusicBee will just create a new header each time the group changes, so you may see the same header multiple times.) You can click on a header to select all the tracks in that group, or double click to trigger the action you have configured in Now Playing Preferences. You can adjust the font of the headers via . Collapse Albums The Collapse Albums option, found at the bottom of the Group By menu, changes Track Detail view to display one album per line instead of one track per line. Individual tracks can still be viewed by using the open/close arrow in the first column. Single tracks will still display as usual. Customize Panel This window can be opened from the panel menu (where it says "Tracks") by choosing "Customize Panel..." (the last menu item). It can also be opened from Panels Configuration by clicking the ... button where it says "files: Panel Settings", or from Preferences > Layout (1), under main panel settings, where it says "files: Customize Layout". There's not much to configure for Tracks View. Hopefully self-explanatory. Ticking this will change the font for the header. Configure Fields This window is opened from the Configure Fields button at the bottom left of the Views Configuration window. It allows you to rename any field (this mainly affects column headings in the main panel), or change the alignment of fields (Left/Middle/Right). You can also change the field type for custom tags and virtual tags: String, Date, Number or Rating. This may affect how the fields are sorted, and what options are available for the fields in rules. (Fields defined as Dates or Numbers can use rules with Greater Than/Less Than or a range of values, and so on.) ;Warning: Don't use a field name already in use in the Original Label column. This can cause conflicts and unexpected results. Here you can change how the Disc-Track# field is formatted. The number of 0s will force that number of digits when Disc-Track# is used, padding smaller numbers with 0s on the left (a setting of 00-000 would produce results like 01-034, 20-003, and 13-121). The character in the middle can be changed to any other character including a space, or removed if you prefer not to have a separating character. This will substitute MusicBee's encoding description (small file size, portable device, high quality, or archiving) for the bitrate field, but it requires that the files were encoded with MusicBee.